Chris McTavish
by coolby
Summary: New chapters added. The story of an Australian CHERUB who joins shortly after his family is killed by a london drug cartel. Packed full of action and humour! please Review! My first time at fan fiction so please be gentle.


1. Expelled

Chris White sat in the chair across the polished wooden desk of the chubby balding Principal. His mother sat in the chair to his right, the chair on his left was empty. The Principal's bushy moustache moved as he spoke, like it was trying to escape from his fat wrinkly lip. He had been called into the principal's office to have a chat with him and his mum about his options. It had then turned out that it was because someone had ratted to the principal that Chris had been involved in an incident where a group of kids had taken to the deputy principal's car with some crowbars and a few cans of spray paint. When he'd got to the principals office there was his mum waiting as well as a few of Chris's mates that had also been involved. Dave- a guy with a centre bottom lip piercing and a black beanie, Roy- A skinny guy with a tattoo of a skull on his left nipple and Ben- a guy who busted his face on a pole during a gnarly attempt to jump over a school bus on his skateboard. His IQ dropped a few points to show for it. The four of them could usually be found at the skate park or at some other spot after school.

"Mrs White your son is a born troublemaker, a smart mouth and a menace to this school! I want him to leave the grounds of St Mary as soon as possible and never to come back." the Principal concluded his speech that had spanned on for almost half an hour. 20 minutes later Chris was walking down the front path of St Mary School behind his mother to their small blue car that was waiting in the guest parking lot.

"That's the 6th school Chris." said his mother angrily. "I know its been hard for you to adjust since your father left, but cant you at least last a year?"

Chris's father split on him and his mum less than 4 years ago for no known reason, and in that time he had been kicked out of 5 different schools. Last time it had been because he snuck into the staff room at night with a carton of eggs, a roll of toilet paper and his bag of spray paints. Enough said. At the school before that he had been kicked out for putting a guy through a second story window during a fight. The kid landed on a teacher's car, denting it up and smashing a window. He also got severe back damage. Chris was in grade 10 now, 14 years old, he was medium height, moderately muscled, had a small scar over his left eyebrow from a skateboarding accident where he cut his brow on the end of a grind pole, he had dark green eyes and wore his black hair up in a fauxhawk. Chris threw his bag in the boot of the car and got in the passenger seat. The car drove through the medium traffic of Melbourne out to where Chris lived = A small house that he shared with his mother and grandfather, who was all but bed ridden. The house was starting to develop a run down look, with vines starting to climb the walls and a lawn that hadn't been mowed for a few months.

Chris got out of the car and went inside to his room. It was probably the messiest room in the house, but not by much. Slipknot, Disturbed and Mudvayne posters occupied the walls and a small bad quality TV sat on a table beside an Xbox 360 and a small stack of games. Other than that the room was an overflowing set of drawers and a wardrobe, mainly zip up hoodies, faded jeans and skate shoes, The brands 'Globe' and 'Zoo York' prominent in the pile. A skateboard stuck out from underneath an unmade bed and a window overlooking the big drain behind the house completed the teenager's room. Chris dumped his school bag and because he didn't feel like going out with his friends Chris slapped 'Gears of War' into the 360's disk drive and found the wireless controller underneath a grey t-shirt. He knew he would have to go to another new school in a few days, but he wasn't sure there were any left. Just as Chris plugged a grub hole with a grenade and ducked back into cover on the TV screen, his phone buzzed in his pocket. Chris hit the start button and dropped the controller fishing out his Black LG flip phone Chris hit 'view new message'. It was from Roy.

_Heard you got expelled man. So did Dave and Ben. Meet up at the Sk8 Park ASAP. Were gonna teach that fat bald prick a lesson._

Chris grinned, turned off the Xbox, put his phone back in his pocket, grabbed his 'other' bag and his skateboard and left for the skate park a few blocks away. The 'other' bag is the older knapsack like bag where Chris kept his Graffiti stuff= Paints, a dustpan brush, a rag and one of those doctor masks for the fumes.

It was just after three by the time Chris got to the skate park where he found Dave, Roy and Ben huddled together whispering.

"Hey Chris man." said Dave nodding at him.

"Hey dudes." said Chris.

"We're gonna give the old headmaster something he'll never forget." said Roy who usually came up with the plans.

"Like what?" asked Chris?

"We are going to get into his office up at the school, destroy it, smash the furniture, tag the walls, break the windows and just generally fuck it up. And that's not even the best bit. We'll go to his place and burn out his car! Then we'll egg the house for good measure. Then leg it before the 5-0 show up." explained Roy.

"Okay, that sounds like a great final fuck you to St Mary" said Chris satisfied. "I think we can get gasoline and eggs, We'll get the bats from Bens place and buy some eggs. That should cover it."

About four hours later Chris, Ben, Roy and Dave were outside the principal's office window. Chris was wearing a black hoodie, faded black jeans and his black Zoo York shoes. He was holing a steel baseball bat and his paint bag. Roy threw a brick through the window and they all clambered inside. They proceeded to smash anything and everything within reach. Chris took to the trophy cabinet and smashed one of the guest chairs over the table before opening the top drawer and smashing it off with another blow from the bat. He set to work tagging rude words on the walls while the others continued to put holes in the walls and break the other bits of furniture. Then Ben dropped a stink bomb in the middle of the room and they all bolted back through the window. This all happened within a minute, because they knew the alarm had gone off. They could hear distant sirens as they legged it across town to the principal's house. The adrenaline was pumping through Chris as he whooped and cheered on the way.

About an hour later the gang stood in front of the Principal's house and noticed that there was two cars instead of one. They decided to do both= Dave and Chris on one, Roy and Ben on the other. They found a bottle on the street and transferred half the gasoline into it. Ben had also found a half full whisky bottle which they divided up and made into two Molotov cocktails. They went back to the house and Chris put his bat through the passenger seat window of the bright green Mercedes and Dave tipped in a generous amount of Gasoline. Chris ran around the car and put out the rear driver-side window of the back seat. More gasoline was tipped in. Chris got out the roughly fashioned Molotov cocktail from his bag and quickly lit it. He threw it into the car and ran. The car went up, and as he and Dave fled he saw Ben throw in his own Molotov. They decided it was too risky to egg the house because they were sure that the cops would already be on their way. Both cars exploded within a few seacons of each other, blowing out the front windows of the house and causing Chris to stumble as he ran. On the way past Dave swung his bat into the mailbox, denting it heavily and knocking it over. The group shouted and cheered as they ran off down the street and when they were a safe way away Chris stoped and got out his white can of spray paint and wrote his tag 'White Boi' on a wall, in reference to his racial orientation but also his surname.

The three boys walked down the street into the darkness. Ben and Roy turned down one street, but Dave and Chris lived further down. Chris and Dave said their 'C'ya L8r's' to Ben and Roy before continuing down the dark street.

"We gave him hell, eh?" said Chris smiling.

"Yeah, totally." said Dave. A few minutes later Chris stopped on his own lawn, said bye to Dave and went inside. Dave, he knew, had to go down about another block and turn into a cul-de-sac.

Chris knew that his mum would be in bed, and his grandfather would probably be fast asleep in his chair, or through some miracle may have found the energy to drag himself to bed. Chris's mum didn't mind Chris going out at night, so long as he didn't have school in the morning. Her theory was that if she didn't he would just sneak out anyway, so it was better for him not to be breaking the rules.

It was almost 2 in the morning when Chris put his stuff away and had a shower. His mother would notice the paint, gasoline and plaster dust all over his clothes, but she wouldn't ask about it preferring not to know what hooligan activity he had been involved with, but she would know anyway as soon as she read in the paper that the principal of the school he had just been expelled from had just had his car burnt out. Chris climbed into bed at about 2:30 and went to sleep.

2. Farewell

It was 11 in the morning when Chris entered the kitchen, his hair still slightly damp from the shower and dressed in baggy grey jeans, 'Globe' shoes and a stripy purple hoodie. His mother was watching TV in her Work uniform; she would have to go in less than half an hour. His grandfather was in his chair in front of the TV, the place where he was when not in his bed in what was once the guest bedroom. When Chris poured some nutrigrain into a bowl his mother came into the room and sat with him at the table.

"Listen Chris, I have decided that I'm sick of you acting up at school. You've gone through every school in Melbourne. There's none left. So instead of doing home school I've decided it might be good for you if you moved out to live with your Uncle Paul in London. He's closer to your age and he understands what its like not to have a dad around." said Chris' mum. Chris sat, letting the news sink in. London, now that's not so bad. He liked the city, and he had known for the last few months that it was fairly likely for his mum to dump him on a relative. He'd met Uncle Paul once before, not too bad of a guy, fairly laid back.

"Could be worse" he said. "When do I leave?"

"Next Monday. Four days." said mum. Chris nodded and got back to eating his nutrigrain. The TV in the next room was showing the news. A blonde lady was interviewing a generic old white politician about something that had blown up in Afghanistan or Arabia or something.

"I have to go to work. See you this afternoon." said mum picking up her bag and walking out the door. Chris's Mum worked for the Melbourne train system, as a transit officer. Chris went into the lounge room and lay across the couch. His grandfather was asleep, so he got the remote of his grandfathers table and changed channel over to Fox 8 where it was showing 'Futurama'. Realising that he'd seen the episode a hundred times before he put down the remote and watched it again anyway.

About 4 hours later Chris got a txt from Dave.

"_My dad is making me do home school, he said Im not allowed to even leave the house for the next 2 weeks!" _

Chris txt'd how his mum was sending him to live with his uncle in London. After Monday he wasn't even going to be on the same continent as them. He sent the same message to Ben and Roy as well. Roy replied with how they would have to have a goodbye party for him, tomorrow night.

"_That sounds like a good idea" _txt'd Chris with a grin.

He got off the couch and put the remote back on his grandfathers table and went to his room. He took 'Gears of War' out of the disk drive and instead, after checking the Xbox LIVE cord was plugged in started playing 'Call of Duty 4' online with a bunch of guys who were undoubtedly American. All though not the best player on his team Chris pulled in 4th out of 12 the first game, and after warming up came in 2nd on his team and 3rd over all. Generally preferring to use the heavy machine guns, or shotguns during the third game he had a crack at sniping and wasn't too bad at it.

The next day passed without incident. Ray said he had found a place to have the party; a nearby house owned by Ray's brother's friend. Dave planned to sneak out to it and Ben's brother was going to bring along two slabs of beer. The word had been spread around at school and a fair few people planned to show up. At about 6:30 that night Chris dressed up in dark blue jeans, a White hoodie and bright white shoes with the globe logo on the sides. He went out the door towards the address Roy had given him. It was almost 7 by the time he found it.

He opened the door to loud music and people trying to talk over it. Roy saw him and waved. He was on a couch talking to Ben and Dave. There was also a tall blonde guy standing there laughing. Chris recognised him from school but couldn't put a name to him. Chris walked up and joined in the conversation. He looked around; there were at least 30 people in the room. Out side in the yard or by the pool there was another 50 or so. After a few minutes Chris left the group and started talking to a girl called Rachel from school. She had shoulder length brown hair and brown eyes. She was wearing tight black jeans and a mid-drift blue top. He told her about what he, Roy, Dave and Ben had done to the principal's office and the two cars at his house.

It was an hour and 2 cans of beer later when he and Rachel were outside up against the back wall of the house kissing. Earlier he had seen Dave chatting up a girl who Chris knew to be the younger sister of one of the strongest, meanest grade 12 kids at St Mary's. Although the girl was hot, Chris doubted that she was worth the beating that Dave would probably cop if he got too close to her. Half an hour later Rachel was leading Chris back into the house, upstairs to find an empty room, or at least a moderately empty room. They found one of the smaller bedrooms empty and they started to make-out on the bed. Chris had drunk the better part of a six pack down stairs, and doubted he would remember much of what he did with this girl, which was disappointing to say the least. Rachel's shirt came off revealing her black bra. They continued to make-out and Chris's hands found their way under the waist band of Rachel's jeans. Not long after that Chris was distracted by the sound of sirens outside.

The two quickly put their various items of clothing back on and went down stairs. Out side on the front lawn, the cops were pulling two fighting guys off each other and telling everyone to get back. Another cop was holding back another guy who looked as if he was trying to get in and help his friend. When they got a bit closer Chris recognised one of the fighters as Ben, and the guy trying to get in was Ben's older brother Stevo. The guy on the ground had blood all over his face and shirt. He looked as if he had a broken nose. Ben had a bruise on his cheek that given a few hours would be a black eye.

"Who's the guy with the messed up face?" Chris asked someone in the watching crowd.

"That's Carl, The two were talking, then out of nowhere Ben freaks his face and puts him through the door. Then he jumps on him and hits his face like 10 times. Then Carl gets a rock and smacks him in the cheek and the feds rock up. They start rolling around, Bens bro tries to come in and kill Carl with a knife." says a guy with a mullet.

"When the cops grabbed bens bro, he stabbed one with the knife."

Chris noticed a cop at the side getting first aid on a wound and another cop putting a kitchen knife into an evidence bag.

You know the party is over when the cops take away two conscious guys, an unconscious one and a wounded cop. Most people started to walk or drive home, some were staying there till morning. Rachel gave Chris her number before getting in a car with some friends and one of their older sisters, who had driven over to pick them up. Chris and Dave started to walk home, they lived in the same area, Roy was staying the night and going home in the morning.

"So Ben fucked that guy up royal." Said Dave.

"Yeah, do you know what happened?" asked Chris.

"I think Carl said something about his mum or something." Said Dave.

"Shit, remind me never to talk about Ben's mum." Laughed Chris.

Chris got home at a quarter to 2 and after a forcing down a few cups of water to fight tomorrows inevitable hangover, went to bed to have dreams about what a few more police free hours could have led to with Rachel.

The following morning Chris stayed asleep till almost lunch time, at 12:35 he got out of bed feeling like absolute shit. He went out to the kitchen and had another few cups of water, then went to the bathroom. He took a piss, then had a long shower. He went back to his room and got dressed. Grey ripped jeans, his black 'Zoo York' shoes and a dark grey zip up hoodie over an 'Element' T-shirt. He went into the kitchen and poured some nutrigrain and milk into a big red bowl. His mum was long gone to work and grandad wasn't in his chair, meaning that he was in his bed. Chris took his cereal out into the lounge room and put on MTV. The chances of anything social happening the morning after a big party and even if there was he would pass on account of the two heavyweight boxing champions going off at his brain like it just raped their mothers.

Chris spent the rest of the day on the couch snacking out and feeling sorry for himself. That night mum got back just after 7:00pm with some pizzas. She took some to grandad in his bed, and the two of them sat in front of the TV to eat. After eating she got him to help clean up the kitchen in her weekly war on dishes and mould. Then she told him to go pack his clothes and things to take to England the day after tomorrow.

He went back to his room and got his old faded duffel bag out of his wardrobe and began rolling up his clothes and packing them into the bag. He knew he wouldn't be able to take nearly all his stuff so he chose his favourite five sets of jeans, favourite five hoodies, three pairs of shoes, five shirts and 10 pairs of briefs and socks. The duffel bag was almost full. In a padded case Chris packed his Xbox 360 making sure that it wouldn't be damaged he put it in the centre of the bag and used the rolled up clothes to surround it and make sure that it wouldn't be damaged. Chris crossed the room to his school bag, he tipped it upside down and emptied everything out onto his bed. Books, pencil case and a folder of handout sheets. He kept the pencil case, but the rest went into the bin. He put into the bag his IPod, CD collection, The Xbox 360 games and the Xbox 360 controllers. He packed the rest of his clothes into boxes and put them under his bed along with all his other stuff he wasn't taking.

Mum had said that she wanted to use his room as the guest bedroom, so when he was finished the room was a bed, an empty wardrobe and drawers, a TV on a table and blank poster-less walls. Then he went to bed.

3. Airborne

The next day passed without much event, Chris had breakfast at 10:30 then went to hang out with Roy and Ben. They went to the skate park and goofed off, then they went to the shopping centre and checked out clothes shops, video games and the food court. They caught an afternoon showing of 'Hellboy 2' and then at about 6:30 Chris went home and watched TV till his mum came home with a hot chicken and a loaf of white bread.

The next day was the day when he left for London. He said his goodbyes to Grandad and mum before mum got him a taxi to the Melbourne international airport. He got out of the taxi with his duffel bag in his hand and his other bag on his back, with his skateboard poking out the top of it. He went into the terminal and joined the massive queue at check in and baggage drop. 20 minutes later he got to the desk. He showed the lady the printout of the airplane ticket printout that his mum had got him off the internet at the library. The lady put his bag on the moving thingy and checked his passport and some other ID stuff. Then she gave him a boarding pass and told him to go to boarding lounge 30.

Chris went through security, where they scanned his bag and put him through a metal detector. He had to go back and do it again because the scanner had picked up his belt buckle. Then after he was through the other side a security guy called him over to the side. Chris thought he was in some kind of trouble, but it turned out that they just wanted to do a random bomb check. A guy swept him and touched each shoe with some kind of wand before letting him leave.

When Chris got to the boarding lounge a screen told him that he would have to wait for another hour before his plane docked. He sat in a chair and got his IPod out of his backpack. It was stocked up with 'Disturbed', 'Korn', 'Slipknot', 'Mudvayne', 'Breaking Benjamin' and 'Papa Roach'. Although he found 'Papa Roach' a little soft now, he still harboured a soft spot for them because of 'Last Resort' and 'Blood Brothers'. An hour of head banging later the plane arrived and people started to line up to get boarding passes scanned and go onto the plane.

Once on the plane it was a slow moving crowded affair. Everyone trying to get to their seat, but everyone who found their seat held up the proceedings for a good minute to stow their bags in the overhead lockers. Chris was lucky enough to score a window seat, but it turned out to be directly above the wing, so he wouldn't be able to see the ground below anyway. His seat had a little TV screen, a radio, a little light and an air conditioner. He got his IPod out of his pocket again and put his head back and closed his eyes. Time has a habit of going faster when you're having fun, true, but it's even faster if you're unconscious.

The plane docked in London at three o'clock in the afternoon. Chris waited for an opening to appear so he could get out of his seat. Eventually someone stopped and gestured for him to go. Chris looked up into the face of a girl about his age, with golden blonde hair and blue eyes. He smiled and got up. After fetching down his bag Chris walked off the QANTAS jet. When he was in the boarding lounge he turned around too the girl that had let him up, that had been walking behind him.

"I'm Chris." He said putting out a hand. The girl shook it.

"Are you from Here?" he asked, waving an arm.

"The Airport?" she asked with a frown. Chris noticed her accent and realised that she was from England.

"No I mean London." He said with a grin.

"Yes, I live in London. I'm just getting back from a holiday in Australia." She said.

"Nice to meet you. What was you name?" He asked.

"Gwen" she said.

"Alright, see you around Gwen" he said nodding to her and walking off.

When he got down to the baggage terminal he spotted his Uncle Paul in a big black coat and jeans. Chris went over and said hi, then waited for his bag to arrive on the carousel. He spotted it and picked it up. Paul led him to a blue and white ford, where Chris put his bags on the back seat and climbed in. He and Paul chatted on the way home about the weather and how his Grandad was doing. They pulled out of the street into a complex of flats. They parked in front of one of the three story brown brick buildings and through a swinging wooden door. They went up one flight of stairs, down a hallway to room 28. Chris logged the number in his brain.

"This in here will be your room" said Paul showing Chris into a small empty room. It was completely bare, no bed, no cupboard, nothing.

"Tonight you can sleep on the couch, but in a few days youll get a mattress in here, like with sheets and a pillow and blankets and stuff, and I'm also getting it a little table and stuff for you. Sorry, I'm a bit short for cash at the moment, but give it a week, it won't be so bad." said Paul. Chris nodded and put his bags down in a corner. Paul led him back into the lounge/ kitchen area. So that in there is my room, across from yours. The bathroom is through here, and this is the kitchen/living room. Half the room was tiles and appliances; the other half was a couch looking at a flat, wide screen TV. _Everything the body needs_. Thought Chris with maybe just a hint of sarcasm. Chris went and got his Xbox 360 and hooked it up to the TV in the living room.

"Alright!" said Paul. "We've got a 360!". Paul was 28 years old. The youngest of Chris's mother's family, he had moved to England about 2 months after his graduation. He worked for an electricity company, fixing the power in people's houses and occasionally getting work on a building site doing wires and stuff.

"Okay, Chris. Basically I'm a pretty laid back guy. I don't have that many rules and I think you'll find I give you a fair bit of freedom. My rules aren't hard to follow, but if you don't follow them then you are going straight back in the wonderful world of Aus." Said Paul, it was a speech that Chris was certain had been practised in the mirror on at least one occasion.

"Sure Paul. What are the rules?" said Chris.

"Okay, there is two rules. Rule one; don't get kicked out of school. Try to keep your grades up and stay out of trouble. Rule number two; don't do anything so serious that the law has to get involved. If a cop drags you up to that door or you call me from a holding cell then you are gone." said Paul.

"That sounds fair." said Chris.

"Alright. Tomorrow morning I'm taking you up to the local public school to get you enrolled." Paul said. "Now what do you say we give this 360 a whack?"

"What game do you want to play? I've got; Call of Duty 4, Gears of War, GTA4, Need for Speed: Pro Street, EA Skate and Guitar Hero 3 but we have to use the Controller because I got the game off E-Bay and it didn't come with the guitar." said Chris.

"Need for Speed" said Paul. Chris nodded and put in the disk.

A few races later, Paul got bored of loosing and went out to get takeaway for dinner.

"You want Chinese or pizza?" he asked

"Whatever is going. You're the local; you know what's safe to eat." Chris laughed.

"Pizza it is" Paul closed the door and Chris could hear his footsteps echoing down the hall. Chris turned off the Xbox and lay across the couch. Paul seemed okay, the house wasn't too bad, So far London wasn't turning out that bad.

Paul came back half an hour later with a pizza. They turned on the TV and ate in front of MTV. A few hours later Chris went to sleep on the couch that conveniently folded out into a bed.

4. Education

The alarm on Chris' phone went off waking him at 7:00am on the Tuesday morning. He had a shower and got dressed in black school pants and a white school shirt. He would have to buy a tie when he got up there. Paul drove him the 4 blocks to school.

"Other than today, you'll have to make your own way up to school." said Paul as he gestured to the sidewalk. Chris nodded, planning to use his skateboard.

After enrolment Chris started with his first class; Maths. He hated maths, not because he wasn't good at it… that was just a secondary reason. He entered the class and as he feared the teacher stood him up the front and introduced him to the class with the cliché "This is Chris White, everyone. Be nice, say hello and help him find his way around the school." Chris waved and sat down as fast as he could in a seat off to the side of the room, next to a guy with a long black fringe over his left eye and an eyebrow ring in his right one.

"Hey." Chris nodded as he sat down. "Can you spare a guy a page out of your book?"

Fringe guy shrugged and slid the book to Chris. Chris turned to the back and ripped a page out. He handed the book back to fringe man.

"Thanks" he said.

"Cool accent, what are you Irish?" asked fringe man in what Chris would describe as a cool accent.

"Melbourne, Australia" Said Chris.

"Alright class stop talking and prepare to learn!" said the teacher drowning out conversation. For the next 70 minutes Chris copied down and tried to answer equation after equation. Then the teacher handed out homework sheets and yelled out pieces of information as the class walked out the door into the hall. As Chris walked off down the hall towards his next class, Fringe guy ran after him.

"Chris! Wait up!" he yelled. Chris turned around.

"Name's Kent, Have you got science next?" said Fringe guy.

"Yeah. Upstairs." said Chris.

"You're in my class." said Kent. The two of them went up to the second story and along the corridor to their science class.

For the rest of the day Chris hung out with Kent, At lunch time they sat in the cafeteria with Kent's younger brother and a few of his friends. They all seemed to be fairly cool people, the sort of crowd Chris usually hung out with. It was kind of weird because of the slight language changes. London kids didn't have the same sort of Slang that Chris was used to. Like instead of kissing, or making out they said snogging, which Chris found kind of weird. And on the flip side, every time he told someone that he was from Australia, they either said G'day Mate, or something about barbequed shrimps. After school Kent invited Chris to hang out at the mall.

"Sounds okay." said Chris.

"Cool." said Kent.

They talked as they walked down to the shops. It turned out that Kent liked the same sort of music that Chris was into, they both liked Xbox over playstation and they both thought that cricket was way overrated. Even though, if Australia won the ashes Chris would be forced to rub it in a bag out England. Kent laughed.

"Likewise." He said. "If England wins." They reached the big shopping centre and hung out for the rest of the afternoon.

Chris got back home just after 6:00pm and put his bag in his room. He changed out of his school clothes into grey jeans and a green hoodie. Paul said that he usually gets home about 6:30pm, so Chris sat down and started to play Grand Theft Auto 4.

When it got to 7 and Paul still wasn't home, Chris decided to raid the fridge for something to eat. The fridge was pretty empty, and Chris wasn't game to eat some of the stuff that was in there. Chris quickly scrawled a note; _gone up the street to find some tucker. _Then he went out the door in search of McDonalds or something. He looked each way down the street and couldn't see any food joints. He walked up to the corner and looked down that street. He spotted it! He knew there was a McDonalds around there somewhere. 20 minutes and a medium Big Mac meal later he returned to the flat.

Just as it hit 7:45pm Paul charged into the room, swung around and locked the door behind him.

"Chris!" he said.

"What the hell is going on?!" asked Chris.

"No time to explain. There's two guys coming up here to kill me!" he said, pushing past Chris into the kitchen. He opened a cupboard up near the roof and took down a small wooden box. He opened it and took out a 9mm pistol. Then he started to push bullets into a clip. When he had loaded 6, the door handle jiggled. He slid the half full clip into the gun and pulled back the slide, loading a round into the chamber. He flicked the safety switch up to single shot. Chris dived into cover behind the kitchen bench as the door was kicked in, splintering woodchips onto the carpet in a small cloud of dust. Two leather clad skinheads entered the room holding chunky silver magnums.

Chris slid the phone off the bench and dialled 000. then he cursed himself, hung up and dialled 911. He swore again and tried to remember what the English emergency number was. He remembered watching a British cop show once called 'The Bill'. Then he remembered and dialled 999.

"My name is Chris White, my uncle and I are under attack from men with guns. We are in room 28, Sunshine flat complex." He wasn't sure if anyone had picked up yet, but he dropped the phone and put his hands over his ears as Paul squeezed off two rounds at the skinheads. The return fire blew massive holes in the wall, smashed the window over the sink and sent glass flying over Chris. Paul dropped the gun and staggered backwards. His blood was spattered on the wall behind him, then another round caught him in the neck, spraying Chris with blood. Paul collapsed backwards and smacked his head on the edge of the bench with a dull thud as he fell. Chris's ears were ringing with the noise, The horror of what he had just seen not quite impacting on him yet. He stood up, aware that he was covered in blood, dust and small shards of glass. He was holding the gun.

One of the skinheads was down, clutching his shoulder. The other aimed his gun at Chris. Without thinking Chris raised the small black weapon and shot the skinhead. Four rounds later, the skinhead was on the ground and Chris stood, holding the gun out in front of him dumbly in the middle of his dead uncles bloodstained kitchen. The scene of his only uncle's murder; The place that less than an hour ago had merely been the place that housed the empty fridge. After what had felt like six hours, but had actually been closer to three seconds, Kent ran into the room, followed by his little sister and an older guy in a suit.

"What the hell are you doing here?" asked Chris numbly.

"Were too late." said Kent. The older guy started to talk into a radio.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" said Chris. He dropped the gun on the floor and leant on the cupboard, his legs feeling weak.

"Shouldn't be here…" he muttered to himself. "not supposed to be…" he said quietly. Then he passed out, slumped over the bench knocking over a picture of his mother, grandfather, Paul and his Grandmother that had died almost 8 years ago. The picture fell off the bench and smashed on the white tiles, quickly being covered by the pooling blood from Paul's neck.

5. Family

When Chris woke up in a white room, in a white bed, with clean white sheets and white shagpile carpet, his first thoughts were that he was dead. One of the skinheads must have clipped him with a round and he bled to death. But then he realised that, were he dead, his head would not be splitting with lightning sharp pain. He felt like he had just been hit by a very large truck full of hammers, and maybe a few fish from earlier… what? He got out of bead and shook his head, as if to dislodge the pain. Surprisingly it didn't work. Then he looked down and realised that he was in his underwear, which was kind of weird. He looked around and saw a small pile of clothing. There was an orange T-shirt, Olive green Army style pants and a pair of boots. Chris shrugged, better than nothing. The shirt was a bit loose on him, and the pants were too. He decided that he'd better not do too much jumping or they'd fall down. The put the boots on without much trouble and walked out a door, holding his pants, just in case. He saw a group of people walking down the corridor towards an elevator. He ran to catch up with them.

"Where the hell am I?" he asked them. The group of girls turned around, they were younger than he was by a few years at least. They started to giggle and whisper to each other,

"Not allowed to talk to orange" said one, and the rest nodded, unsuccessfully trying to suppress their giggles. He nodded. "Right…" but he still felt confused. He got in the elevator anyway, and hit the button for ground floor. He decided that he was getting the hell out of this place. When the door opened, he got out and there was a guy about his age wearing a black t-shirt, and 3 piercings in his left ear.

"Dude where the fuck am I?" asked Chris. The guy rolled his eyes and pointed at the front desk.

"She's allowed to talk to orange" said the guy walking passed Chris into the elevator. Chris walked over to the front desk, where the lady smiled.

"Hi Chris, Dr Terrance will see you now." said the lady.

"Who?" asked Chris.

"Dr Terrance is our Chairman." She said. Chris nodded dumbly and walked through the door that the lady had gestured to.

"Hello Chris, I'm Doctor Terrance McAfferty. But today you can call me Mac." said a man from behind his desk.

"How's it going." said Chris sitting down. "Now can _you_ tell me where the hell I am?"

"All in good time Chris, but first there is something I have to tell you something. Please sit down." said Mac. Chris sat in a small black chair across from Mac.

"As you may or may not remember Chris, yesterday you and your Uncle were attacked by two men." said Mac.

"The skinheads." said Chris nodding.

"They were a part of one of the major drug trafficking organisations in London. Your Uncle was partly involved with this organisation, performing deals with other gangs and the like. It was mostly small time stuff until one day he was in a major deal. He was given 20million Pounds cash in a briefcase and along with a partner they were to trade it for a carload of cocaine. The deal turned out to be a set-up. Paul and his partner came under fire from four men with automatic weapons in the construction area beside them and the three men they were supposed to do the deal with all drew weapons. Paul managed to incapacitate two of them and escape with the money. He then took the suitcase of money, and supposedly scared of answering to the organisation decided to take the 20million and run for it." said Mac.

"So my Uncle was part of a big time drug cartel?" asked Chris.

"Yes. The drug Cartel sent an operative back to Australia to try and squeeze his location out of his sister: Your mother. On Monday afternoon, the afternoon of the day you left Australia, your mother and grandfather were reported dead. Your mother had been tortured for information on your uncles whereabouts, your grandfather had been shot in the head, possibly to convince your mother to reveal your Uncles whereabouts. After which she was also shot in the head." said Mac. Chris sat in the small metal chair across the desk from the strange man who had just casually informed him of his mother's brutally horrific death.

"I see…" said Chris blankly. He spent a few minutes letting the news sink in. he had never been that close to his mother, they never got on all that well and he hadn't been very sad to be leaving the house for the next 3 or 4 years but that didn't mean that finding out that she had died made his insides churn so much that he thought he was going to be sick and his heart feel like it had just been crushed under a steam-roller.

"You have two options; we can send you to one of London's orphanages, or if you so choose you can stay and live here." said Mac.

"Where is here?" asked Chris, wiping the tears off his cheek.

"This is CHERUB campus. We are a branch of MI5, Training special Agents of the ages between 10 and 17. We specialise in recon or infiltration missions where adults would be to obvious. Adults never suspect kids of spying on them." said Mac, Chris suspected it was another one of those speeches that were practiced In the mirror every night before bed.

"You train kids to be spies?" asked Chris.

"Precisely." said Mac. "One of our agents, Kent, said that you were a perfect example of what we train into agents. You are a fit young boy, with, I suspect, a good brain; although you might not apply it to your school work. I did a background check on you; Break-ins, vandalism, fighting; quite impressive. You are exactly the type of person we like to find. If we can straighten you out a bit, give you some extra training you could be an extremely valuable asset to the organisation."

"You want me to be a spy?" asked Chris.

"Yes." said Mac. Chris thought for a while. It didn't sound so bad, and it beat the crap out of being in an Orphanage.

"Alright, ill give this spy stuff a go." said Chris.

"Ok, before we accept you, you have to pass a few simple tests." said Mac.

"Like what?" asked Chris, getting a bit suspicious.

"5 simple tests, just so we know a basic idea of your abilities." said Mac.

6. Tests

Just over an hour later, Mac was leading Chris into a big dojo building. It was filled with kids practising kung-fu, Karate, Jujitsu and other martial arts. Chris stared awe struck as 11 year old girls snapped concrete blocks In half with their fists, of kit punching bags at super lightning speed.

"In here." Mac led Chris into a side room where there was the black shirted guy with the ear piercings from before.

"This is Mike. He will be sparring with you today. The first person to get 5 submissions wins. An opponent can submit by tapping out or by speaking. No hitting the testicles, no eye gouging." said Mac. Chris shook hands with Mike. He was a little bigger than Mike, and stronger. But his instincts told him that mike was probably trained with the ferocious martial art skill that he had seen just outside and he made it a point not to underestimate the guy.

"Go!" said Mac. Chris ducked instantly, and a punch sailed right past where his head had been. He instantly dove into Mikes gut, wrapping his arms around and attemping to drive Mike into the floor. Mike fell backwards, but quickly rolled onto the top where he was sitting on Chris's chest and hit Chris in the face with a punch. Blood spurted out of Chris's nose and his eyes welled up with tears to the point where he could barely see. Two more hits landed, one on Chris's jaw and the other on his opposite cheek.

"I submit!" yelled Chris. Mike got up and Chris used a towel at the side to spit out a tooth and wipe his eyes and nose clean. Then he stepped back into the circle.

"Go!"

Chris swung instantly, mike moved so that the punch went directly over his shoulder. He wrapped both his hands around Chris's arm and spun around, swinging chris onto the ground hard. Chris let out a grunt as he hit the hard wooden floor, jarring his shoulder. He rolled out of it and stood up. He lunged forwards grabbing Mikes collar, he head-butted mike in the face. Mike stumbled backwards, then recovered almost instantly and punched Chris in the guts. Chris doubled over. Mike put a hand on each side of his head.

"Submit, or you get a knee in the face." said Mike. Chris tried to spin out of it, copping the knee in the side of the head. It dazed him a little. Mike swept Chris's legs out from under him. Chris hit the ground on his back. Looking up at mike, who fell forwards, plunging his knee into Chris's face. Chris yelled in pain, as he got up into a crouching position.

"FUCK!! I submit!" he said, blood spraying out as mist with each word.

After wiping his face with the towel they went back into it. Chris was genuinely pissed at Mike, but he tried not to let it into his fighting. As soon as you go psycho, your performance drops. You have to be calm and concentrate on the task at hand.

Mike drilled Chris with a punch in the sternum. Chris rolled back his shoulder, and starting at the waist put all his body weight into a punch. He hit Mike in the chest, Knocking him back onto the floor. Chris jumped onto mike and laid a punch onto his face.

"Submit!" yelled Mike. Chris got up off him and went over to the now blood stained towel. It gave him an heir of satisfaction to see his opponents nose not quite straight.

"Go!" yelled Mac. Mike ducked Chris's punch, head butted him in the gut and bent Chris's arm around behind his own back. He slowly rose it up Chris's back. Both of them knew it was a matter of seconds before Chris's arm dislocated.

"I submit!" said Chris, knowing that he wouldn't have a chance with only one arm.

"Go!" said Mac.

Chris was on the ground face down before he had even seen Mike move. Mike was sitting on his back. Mike licked his finger and put it in Chris's ear, before leaning back and grabbing Chris's ankles.

"Submit now and we won't have to find out if it is physically possible for you to kiss your own ass." said Mike.

"I submit" laughed Chris "Get off me."

"Go!" said Mac. Chris dove at Mike, but Mike moved and he landed on the ground. Mike grabbed Chris's hand and started to bend back his pinkie finger.

"Submit?" asked Mike.

"Submit." said Chris. Mike let go of Chris's hand and then helped him up.

"Go!" said Mac. Mike grabbed Chris's fist out of the air and spun Chris around. He put Chris's head into the crook of his arm and wrapped his arm around Chris neck. He began to squeeze. Chris's face went pink, then red, then purple, then dark purple before Chris let the air out of his lungs with a sigh and sculpted the air with the shape of his mouth and tongue as it passed through.

"Submit" he wheezed. Mike let go and stepped back. Chris fell to his hands and knees gasping for air.

"That's 5 submits, Mike has defeated Chris." said Mac. "Come on Chris, 4 more tests to go."

Mac led Chris into a class room. There was about 16 desks in the room. Mac sat Chris down in one, dropped a test booklet in front on Chris with 2 sharp pencils and walked up to the teachers desk and sat down.

"Basic Intelligence test; Maths, English, Science. All that fun stuff. Aaaaand Begin"

Chris flipped open the booklet and started filling in the little bubbles. The questions were a bit hard, but he understood the concepts.

Then after the time ran out Chris handed in the almost complete booklet, and Mac led him into the next test which was a small room off the kitchens. It was an empty metal room except for the table in the middle which had a cage on it. In the cage was a chicken.

"I want you to kill this chicken." said Mac.

"Oh I get it, this is one of those morality tests. No I don't want to kill the chicken." said Chris.

"Why not?" asked Mac.

"I'm not comfortable with killing animals personally" said Chris.

"But you eat chicken" said Mac.

"But that chicken wasn't killed personally by me. It was killed in a chop house no where near me. It has been de-humanised, well, de-chickenised. So my brain is more comfortable with its death." said Chris. "But I doubt that you can give me full marks for this test because I understand what's going on. I've seen it on TV"

"I see… very well. COOK!!" said Mac yelling the last word. A fat guy entered the room, walked over to the chicken opened the cage and cut the chickens head off with a butcher knife. Blood leaked out of the chicken on the table. The cook put the knife back on his belt and left the room.

"That's kinda gross" said Chris.

Mac led Chris out past some more buildings to a high ropes obstacle course. There were two big older guys there in black shirts.

"This is Chad and his twin brother Greg. They will take you through the obstacle course." Chris climbed up a ladder till he was high up in the air. He got to the top and began to shake with fear.

"What're you scared of heights?" asked Chad.

"No, I'm scared of the ground. And what will happen if I hit it." said Chris. Chad and Greg laughed.

"You'll be all right, just don't look down. Imagine that the ground is just 3 inches below you." said Greg. The three of them went slowly across the obstacle course; Greg in front, Chris in the middle and Chad bringing up the rear. They got to a point where they had to jump from one platform, across a few feet to the other platform. Greg did it; Chris hesitated, before bunching up his face and jumping. For a few heart stopping moments Chris sailed through the air, then he slammed down into the platform then traversed a few more obstacles then Greg jumped off the course. For a few seconds Chris thought that he had fallen, then he saw Greg land on a giant bullseye mattress below. Chris stopped again. He demanded his brain not too think about it and jumped out into space. Then he hit the mattress with a bone jarring poomph. When Chris was off the mattress Mac led him to the final test. It was a pool. Swim the length of this pool. Chris pulled off his boots and shirt. He looked at the pants. They were big and baggy. He took them off as well. Then he dived into the pool and swam to the other end in his underwear. He was Australian after all.

7. Meeting

"Well, you passed." said Mac.

"That's always good." said Chris.

"The first test, you showed that you had guts, you also got a few good hits in there. You showed a good understanding of when it was smart to back down. Also a good skill. Test two, You got the majority of questions right as well as not obsessing over the harder questions. If you didn't know it you left it and went on. Test number three, you were right, it was a test of your moral strength and decisivness. You also chose your points wisely and argued well. Test number four. You got across the course. You stopped a few times and didn't do it as fast as we hoped. But you overcame your fears and finished. Test number five, you swam the pool. Enough said. you performed above the average for CHERUB agents. Good job. You will be made a time table, it will include fitness program and school classes. I sujest you get as much extra fitness training as you can because you arrived just in time to do Basic Training in a few weeks." said Mac.

"What is Basic Training?" asked Chris.

"It is a training course that lasts 100 days, it initiates you into CHERUB and earns you the grey T-shirt." Said Mac

"Grey T-Shirt?" asked Chris.

"Orange shirt is for guests, red is for people that have done the tests but not done Basic yet. Grey is people that can go on missions, then you move up to navy, then black." said Mac.

"Right." said Chris

"Oh yeah, you have to have a new last name, for security purposes." said Mac.

"Whatever. Um… McTavish?" said Chris.

"It is supposed to match your ethnic background." said Mac.

"Sure it does, guy called McTavish from Ireland, moves to England, Steals a loaf of bread, you English bastards decide he's not allowed to feed his family and as a result you ship him off to that great big prison Island Cpt. Cook just discovered down below Indonesia." said Chris.

"Okay." said Mac.

"McTavish it is, I always thought that would be a cool name." said Chris

"Earlier you said that one of your agents recommended me for CHERUB? Who was it?" asked Chris.

"Kent Brown. He was on a mission at your school, and you two met. His mission was to get close to your Uncle through you to try and save him from the Drug Cartel." said Mac.

"Right, so everyone I know is either a spy or dead. Great. Is there a room where I can have a shower and maybe get a change of clothes." said Chris.

Mac had someone take him up to a room on the 3rd floor. He got inside to find his Green duffel bag and his Backpack. He unzipped them. Everything was there. Even the 360 had been packed up and put into the duffel bag. Chris also saw a stack of red T-shirts with the CHERUB logo on them. The room was Epic. There was a double bed, a big TV, couch, a mini fridge, a microwave and an en-suite bathroom with bath, shower, toilet, sink and mirror. His window overlooked the soccer fields.

"Thanks" he said to the guy who had taken him there. Chris got some jeans out of the duffel bag, and a pair of briefs and went into the en-suite shower. He came out 10 minutes later to see Kent and Mike waiting for him in his room.

"Hey Chris." said Kent, who was wearing a navy shirt. Mike had a few bandaids on his face.

"Hey Mike. You look like someone with extreme skill head-butted you in the face or something." said Chris grinning as he picked up one of the red shirts and slipped it on. He sat on the couch and took a pair of Globe shoes out of the duffel bag.

"You look like someone schooled 5 submissions out of you with out even breaking a sweat." said Mike.

"You may not have broken a sweat, but you broke your nose." said Chris. Kent laughed. Mike reluctantly smiled.

"You got a few good hits in, you did better on me than I did on my first day." said Mike.

Chris pulled his 360 out of the bag and tried connecting it to the TV,

"Dammit" he said.

"What?" asked Kent.

"The power point is the wrong shape!" said Chris. "Regular Australian shaped power points not good enough for the UK. My uncle had a heap of adapters, but they didn't bring them from the house."

"You can probably pick one up in town, we'll go down there tomorrow, eh?" said Mike.

"Yeah, sounds fun." said Chris.

"Let's go down stairs and grab some food to stock up Chris's new mini fridge." said Kent.

They caught the lift down to the 2nd floor, where the cafeteria was. They went back into a room where there were shelves packed with Pepsi, chocolate bars, snack foods. But also there was protein shakes and healthy stuff. Chris got a few cans of Lift, a bunch of Mars bars, and a heap of the healthier snacks. His mum had always tried to get him eating healthy, and now that she was gone he decided to listen to her. The trio made their way back to the 3rd floor, it turned out that Kent lived directly across the hall from Chris and Mike was just down a few doors.

The next day Chris had to go for a Medical exam.

"Watch out Chris. That crazy German doctor likes to jab the needles in none too gentle." said Mike.

"Ill look out for that." nodded Chris going down to the Medical Wing.

The doctor got Chris onto a treadmill to test his fitness or something. A nurse put a bunch of monitoring pads on his chest. The doctor pressed the difficulty button a few times and Chris was almost sprinting. After a few minutes the doctor gradually slowed it down to a stop.

"Get down off the treadmill." said the doctor in a thick German accent.

"You got it." said Chris, panting slightly.

"You are far from the fittest person to come through here boy, but not the worst either." He said. "Continue with your assigned fitness program, and I'm sure you will burn off that flab." said the doctor poking Chris in the stomach. "now on to the injections!"

"Injections?" asked Chris.

Chris sat in his room massaging the million or so punctures in his right arm. Kent was playing the Xbox 360, which they had finally got a converter for and Mike was apparently serving some kind of punishment.

"So what's the deal with this Basic Training thing?" asked Chris.

"Well basically, the teachers grab all the kids moving up into CHERUB or coming here from the rest of the world like you, get turned over to this crazy kid hating guy called Mr. Large and his cronies. Its like a 100day boot camp, pure hell toughening up program." said Kent.

"Sounds like fun." said Chris.

"If I were you, id get good at doing sets of 50 push-ups in advance. Because that's the sort of thing you get if you put one toe out of line." said Kent.

"Which reminds me I have to go do Fitness training." said Chris standing to leave. "Feel free to come in here and play the 360 while I'm gone."

Fitness training turned out to be weights in the gym and laps around the running track while some coach guy yelled at him and tapped a stopwatch. Chris was familiar with most of the gym equipment, like the chest press, the shoulder press, the Peck fly, Bicep and tricep curls, there were a few other ones that he'd never seen before.

After the allotted 2 hours, Chris decided that with another 3 hours before classes that he'd stay on and do some more exercise. Then to get the sweat off his body Chris went and jumped into the pool. He did a few laps, then got out and had a shower. He went back to his room and got his books for class. He reminded himself in future just to take his books to the gym with him so he wouldn't have to wast time coming all the way back up here.

He went to his first class, which looked like Science. After science he had Russian, then English, break for lunch, Martial arts and finally geography. The classes were much better than the ones he'd had in London. There were only 10 people in each class, meaning that you got a lot more assistance from the teacher. But it also meant that you couldn't get away with goofing off.

After lessons Chris, Mike and Kent went down to the pool for a swim. There were a bunch of other kids down there including a few bikini clad pieces of eye candy. Some kids were throwing big beach balls around and Mike races Chris up and down the pool a few times. What Mike didn't know is that Australian swimmers are like Kenyan runners. The best in the world. But mike was fit, and Chris was kinda tired from the fitness training that morning so only just won.

8. Basic

The next two weeks passed without much event. Chris attended Training, classes, Martial art lessons and even did a one day course on fire arms. It turned out that Chris was even an OK shot. All those war video games were finally starting to pay off.

The point arrived where Basic was only two days away. Chris had packed in all the extra fitness training he could. Kent said that he shouldn't exhaust himself over the next two days, but just let his muscles and everything recover from training so that he would be fresh and ready when the day arrived. So after classes he went up to his room and watched TV.

Then on the morning of Basic, Chris left the widow blinds open so that the sun would wake him up if his alarm didn't. The alarm went off and Chris woke up to find a slightly torn, muddy blue T-shirt with the number 2 on it, some disgustingly gross underwear and tatty boots. Did they expect him to wear this? He looked at the underwear. He would rather go to the orphanage. Chris had a very long shower, cleaning out his hair, Shaving and generally getting as clean as he could. It would be his last shower for 3 months, so he made it count. Then he came out, got dressed in his own, less disgusting underwear, a set of the army fatigue pants that actually fitted him and His own perfectly fine boots. He put on a singlet and then, the muddy ripped blue shirt. He put the gross underwear in the bin and left the boots where they were. He went down to breakfast, and had a bowl of nutrigrain before heading down to the Basic Training camp.

He got there a few minutes early, and stood in front of the big metal, barbed wire topped fence. It looked like prison. After a few minutes some way younger kids arrived. They looked between 10 and 12. It looked like Chris was the oldest person on basic.

"Hey, are you going through basic with us?" asked a 12 year old girl.

"Yeah," said Chris.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"14." He said. Then the gate slid open and the kids all turned to see what Chris guessed was Mr Large.

"Alright kiddies, get inside. For the next three months, I OWN YOU" he shouted the last three words. The kids filed past, Chris in the front.

The basic training building was a big concrete box in the middle of a fence surrounded field of mud. In this building were 6 little military issue cots, with ratty looking mattresses. Mr Large counted heads and looked at a clip board.

"Looks like everyone even made it here on time. That very rarely happens. But just for the hell of it, start doing push ups while I tell you all what's going on." Everyone dropped to their knees, then started doing push-ups.

"This is Basic Training. 100 days of hell. You will all wake up at 0545, have nice cold shower and then run the assault course. 0700 is breakfast, then you enjoy physical training until school starts at 0900. By school I mean Espionage, Language, weaponry and survival skills. At 1400 you will run the assault course again. Lunch is at 1500. at 1600 we have another two hours of physical training. At 1800 you return back here, have another shower, clean your clothes, polish your boots and so on, dinner at 1900, 1930 to 2030 you do your homework, and lights out at 2045, where I suggest you get some shut eye, because 10 hours later, you do it all over again. I remind you all tat the fences around this building are not to keep you in. they are to stop other students from sneaking you in fresh underwear and the like. You may leave the training program at any time, but you will have to re-start Basic training from day one in three months." said Large, pacing backwards and forwards in front of the row of kids, doing push-ups. Chris had lost count at 23, and that was a while ago.

"Alright, get up and stand in front of your bed. They are numbered, in reference to the number on your shirts." Chris stood up, his arms and chest burning slightly. He stood in front of bed number two, in between a rat like boy with buck teeth and a girl with her hair back in a ponytail.

"Chris McTavish, you are paired up with Simon Cross. Louise Baker, you are with Toby Johnson" Large went down the six beds and assigned the kids in pairs. Chris looked at his partner. The bucktoothed rat guy; he was a ginger haired, moderately muscled guy with a spatter of freckles on each cheek.

"Okay, everyone has got their partner. This partner will be with you through everything over the next 3 months. If you mess up and get landed with an extra run through the assault course, so do they. If you get dropped in the middle of the Sahara Desert with nothing but your toothbrush and a change of underwear, it'll be with them." said Large. Then two people came into the building.

"Ah, kiddies. May I introduce you to Mr Speaks and Miss Smoke? They will be assisting me with your torture- I mean training" said Large. Chris gave them a wave and nodded at them. "Miss Smoke. Mr Speaks" he said, trying to show the people that would try as hard as they could to break him, that he wasn't the least bit scared of their little compound.

"McTavish, drop and give me another 30 of hose marvellous push-ups you were doing earlier. You too Ginger."

"Righto mums the word guvna." said Chris in a bad imitation of an English accent. He started to do the push-ups.

"60" said Large

"70" said Chris. Simon looked like he was about to cry, what had he done for god to pair him up with the smart ass?

While Chris and Simon did their push-ups, the rest of the trainees were given breakfast. Cold runny oatmeal. Chris wasn't very disappointed to be missing out.

"Why are you doing this to us?" asked Simon.

"You cant let these big self important military crew-cuts have the satisfaction of bowing you down. You have to stand up for yourself a little bit. Showing these guys that it takes a little more than a few push-ups to beat you, Showing them that you've got balls, you'll come out of here with a lot of peoples respect, not just a different coloured shirt." said Chris.

"I guess, but what if I'm not tough enough?" asked Simon. Chris thought about it.

"Alright bro, ill try to help you out as much as I can, but you're gonna land a few push-ups here and there." said Chris.

They finished all the push-ups and Simon collapsed. Chris stood up, and then picked up his partner. He carried Simon into the food are and put him in a chair, sliding some food in front of him.

"Quick, eat this before time runs out." Said Chris. Simon shovelled down a few spoonfuls before Mr Large blew a whistle.

"Two and a half hours of Physical training!" he yelled. The trainees moved out into the field out side. Mr large had them doing sit ups, push ups, chin ups, running laps and all sorts of stuff in two inch deep mud. At least it wasn't hot, like back in Australia. In fact, had he not been exercising hot blood around his system, Chris would have been quite cold.

Two and a half hours later the trainees had school. They learned about Spying, How to shadow someone, what things to look for when watching a building; gaurds, entrances, fire escapes, they learned about weaponry, bomb making, bomb defusing, cleaning, aiming and firing a weapon, different types of bullets, they learned different languages; Russian, French, Chinese depending on their ethnic background. Chris and Simon both learned Russian, along with another girl, the other three trainees were doing French. After that they learned about survival skills; such as how to capture animals in traps, how to find drinkable water in a desert and how to set up a shelter in a jungle.

After lessons they ran the assault course. It was basically a big long obstacle course in the mud; Climbing up one side and down the other side of a wall, under a low net and through some tunnels before climbing along a rail suspended 3 metres over a deep sticky patch of mud and down a rope to the end. They had to do the whole course in 3 minutes, or they'd have to start again. Chris didn't make it the first time, but when he was more familiar with it the second time it was easier. Then he had to go through a third time to help Simon. Then he had to go through again because Large was in a bad mood.

"Sure thing Crew-Cut." said Chris, slapping Large on the shoulder.

Then they all went back inside for lunch. After they had finished eating the tinned baked beans they had another load of Physical training. This was actually Large showing them a few fighting moves which they practised over and over and over until the last 20 minutes where each person had to have a fight against their partner. Chris went easy on Simon, and so Chris earned himself a couple of dozen laps around the building. From then on he didn't go easy on Simon, but still tried to use the most painless moves to beat him. Thing was, Simon had been at cherub since he was 7, so he had a few moves up his sleeves. They were pretty even matched.

They went into the showers, Mr Large wasn't in a good mood, so it was cold water. Chris felt a little nervous about being naked in-front of his peers, but apparently in England it was perfectly acceptable. He stripped down and got under the taps. Fortunately the other kids were so used to it that they didn't bother to look at each other. Then they washed their clothes in the sinks and put them out to dry on racks, ready for tomorrow. Mr Large ordered them all to clean and polish their boots. Chris was relived to see that a few of the others were wearing their usual boots, instead of the ratty looking ones.

The evening meal was more tinned stuff, though fortunately Large had decided to give it a zap in the microwave prior to dishing it into dented tin bowls. There was no cutlery, so Chris tipped his bowl up and tipped a mouthful into his mouth.

"No more Physical exertion?" he asked Large, trying to fake disappointment.

"30 push-ups" said Large, half heartedly. Chris beamed at him like a Cheshire cat.

"Please sir, may I have some more?" said Chris.

"You just don't learn, do you?" said Large.

"Maybe you're not teaching me well enough." said Chris.

"You are asking for it kid." said Large.

"Then give it to me!" shouted Chris.

"Okay everyone, thanks to McTavish here, we are going to skip homework; the next few hours will be running the Assault Course, over and over and over again." said Large. The other trainees stared at Chris, just wishing that through some miracle looks could kill.

They went to bed covered in mud, they weren't allowed to shower. It was 2 hours since they should have been in bed by the schedule. Chris waved to Miss Smoke and Mr Spokes as he went to his bed.

"How's life treating you?" he asked. They stared at him angrily.

9. Exhaustion

Chris's life for the next few weeks passed, slowly but surely. Basic Training was killing him, not just because he was asking for it. He would come out of this a lot tougher, or not at all. Large tried as hard as he could to get the smug grin off Chris's face, but it was stuck on there like a… something stuck really good. He was starting to run out of new inventive tedious punishments. He, Large, the baron of basic, out of punishments! What was the world coming to?

Chris woke up, it was day 62. He was having trouble remembering that once apon a time, life hadn't hurt. He got up half an hour before the other trainees, got the first shower, cleaned his teeth, put a scratch on the wall to commemorate another day survived. He then went and sat at the door, waiting for Large to arrive. Large came in the door a few minutes later, fully dressed.

"Mornin' Crew-cut. Ready for another fine day of taking out the frustrations of your sad life on a poor bunch of pre-teens? And of course, I will be here to make sure you don't have a minute between dishing out the Pain." said Chris.

"You are a little shit, McTavish." said Large.

"Jesus loves you sir." said Chris smugly.

"Just… do 30 laps around the perimeter." said Large with a yawn.

"Ill do 35." said Chris standing up and walking out the door. He came back in 20 minutes later, sweat dripping out of his hair. The others were having showers and getting ready for the next day in hell. Chris stuck his head into one of the showers and gave his face a split second blast. He dried his hair on one of the threadbare towels.

Breakfast was some sort of milky substance, resembling porridge. Chris drank it from the bowel and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

"Mmmm." He said, closing his eyes in fake bliss. "_So _good! What do you guys put in that sweet nectar of life?"

"Can it McTavish" said Large.

"Fine, I lied, it tasted like shit mixed through more shit." said Chris with a shrug. "Acting is hard." He laughed. Large rolled his eyes.

"Do 20" he said lazily.

"30 it is." said Chris getting out of his chair and onto the floor.

Physical training included large showing them a judo leg sweep, as always he used Chris as an example and tried to inflict as much pain as possible. Then for the next few hours, Chris and Simon practiced on each other, drilling the technique into their brains. For the last 20 minutes Simon and Chris sparred, Matching each other. Chris was bigger and stronger, but Simon had more moves and was a little quicker. About two thirds of the time, Chris won, but not with ease.

Classes went for the next few hours, followed by the Assault course. Chris was the fastest at it, but mainly because he did it about 4 times as much as anyone else as punishments for his constant cheek. Then they had their usually luke-warm meagre lunch. Then Physical training again. This one was exercises; running, sit-ups and the like.

They went back to the shower room afterwards, Chris took his clothes off, cleaned them in the sinks and hung them on hooks, and then he had a shower, cleaning all the sweat, grime and mud off his body. Then afterwards, cleaned and polished his boots. Dinner was the usual pathetic affair. Chris went and sat down with Simon. He ate three quarters of the bowl and offered the rest to Simon, who wasn't stupid enough to refuse extra food in a place like this. It wasn't because Chris wasn't hungry, he was famished. It was because Simon copped the punishments for being Chris's partner and Chris tried to make it up to him.

Then he sat in his bed and did his Espionage homework. It was a multiple choice worksheet;

what would you do if you were tailing a target, and he spotted you.

Run.

Incapacitate him.

Other- please specify.

After finishing the two pages of those sort of questions, he got under the blankets and went to sleep. He was out before the lights were.

This continued for most of the next month. The last week of training was going to be spent off campus, in, to Chris's amazement in the Australian Outback; The Gibson Desert, Western Australia.

"You are allowed to do that when an Australian is taking the course? Wont I have an unfair advantage?" asked Chris.

"The course was planned three years in advance, who takes it is their business." said Large.

"Okay, well as the local I advise everyone not to get bitten by anything in Australia. Our snakes and spiders are built tough. You get bitten, you'll stay bitten." he warned, trying to share as much wisdom as he could to even things out. "Oh, and the smaller a scorpion is, the deadlier it is."

"Alright, everyone get to sleep, tomorrow we leave for Perth. Pack for an Australian summer." said Large, leaving the room as the lights shut off automatically, the generator was on an electronic timer.

"By that he means 50+ degrees centigrade in the sun. about 40 in the shade." said Chris, proud of the outstanding heat his country could put out.

"Oh man, we are gonna die." said Simon.

"Waddaya mean?" asked Chris.

"We're going to get bitten or stung, or die from the heat or of thirst or killed by an aboriginal tribe or something." said Simon, sacredly.

"No way, so long as you stick with me, we'll make it. All Aussies know that to survive in the outback all you have to do is keep hydrated, wear a hat and put on insect repellent. Then just keep a lookout for the snakes. And we don't call them Aboriginals, we call them people, and they live in the towns just like everybody else." said Chris. "Now get some sleep."

10. The Wonderful World of Aus

The trainees walked out of the compound, across the school to where there was a mini bus waiting. It took them to an airport, where a Jet was taking them first class to Sydney, where they were changing planes and then going to Perth.

"Ah, Australia." Sighed Chris, excited to be going back to his home country.

"Yeah, we get it. You're Australian" said one of the girls.

"Too bloody right I am!" he said proudly. "She's a cruel mistress, my country."

That night, after a very comfortable flight over, Chris, Simon and the only other boy on the course; Toby Johnson, were staying in one of the rooms at a swanky hotel in Perth. Across the hall the three girls were staying in a separate room. The teachers were a few doors down. Chris put his bag on a big soft, comfy looking bed and went back into the lounge room. Toby and Simon were raiding the little fridge. Chris sat on the big leather sofa and turned on the TV. He spent a few minutes just listening to the Australian accent. It sounded so… Bland compared to the English accents he had gotten used to. After a few minutes he got up and looked at a clock. It was 6:00pm. He looked over the balcony and saw a pool area. _Sold_. He thought to himself and went and changed into his board shorts. In the bathroom he caught sight of himself in the mirror. He had gotten rid of the sogginess around his gut, and you could see his six-pack. He flexed his muscles and admired himself for a bit longer. Toby walked past and saw him.

"Maybe I should leave you two alone." he said laughing.

"Not looking too bad yourself" said Chris pointing out Toby's refection. Toby took his shirt off and the two of them looked at themselves for a while longer.

"Wanna come down to the pool?" asked Chris.

"Sure" shrugged Toby.

"SIMON! YOU COMING DOWN FOR A SWIM?!" shouted Chris.

"Ok" came the reply from just around the corner.

"Alright" said Chris, looking embarrassed for shouting to someone who was less than two metres away.

A few minutes later the three went downstairs to the pool with towels. They piled the towels on a chair and Chris dived in. Toby did a bomb-dive and Simon walked around to the steps and got in.

"No," said Chris. "Not good enough. Get out and do it again." Simon jumped into the pool with a limp stick dive. The three joked around and swam for half an hour before the girls came down in bikini's and dumped their towels on another chair. Toby wolf-whistled and Chris burst out laughing. The kids messed around in the pool for the better part of an hour, before Large came down and dumped a stack of pizzas on a table. He went back upstairs with two of them. The kids got out, and Chris whooped as he recognised the 'Eagle Boys' logo.

It was about 8:30 when the kids all went back upstairs. Chris had started to go wrinkly on his finger tips and toes. They all hung out in the girl's room, Chris slid down a wall and sat on the floor as the younger kids talked and goofed off. They were slightly more immature than him, but he was fairly immature for his age, and they were overly mature for theirs. It almost evened out, but not quite. It was obvious to Chris that Simon liked Toby's partner, Louise; The girl with the ponytail on the first day. Luckily, Toby wasn't taking much interest in her. The other girls were an 11 year old girl with wavy blonde hair down to her shoulders called Gabrielle, and a 13 year old French-Asian mix girl with straight black hair, Olive skin and a pointed chin, called Tara. Chris thought Tara was pretty hot.

"So, Large said that tomorrow we get given our packs and dropped out of a helicopter at the starting points. Each pair has a separate Checkpoint to complete each day." said Toby.

"My mate, Mike said that you should go through the packs at the start and dump anything that you wont need. The trainers like to give you a load of useless stuff that you'll waste energy carrying. And I'd advise you all to keep any and all water that you can. If you have a moderately clean river, drink as much as you possibly can pack into your system and fill the bottles full. Wast none on your body, it all goes in the mouth." said Chris, well aware of the dangers of dehydration. "Make sure to ration it though. Don't drink it all at once if you won't get any more for a while." The others nodded, taking any and all help they could for the coming task.

It was 10 o'clock the next morning. Chris and Simon jumped out of the Helicopter, which didn't even land, and took off again. They were on the western edge of the Gibson Desert. They immediately opened their packs. They tipped out everything and picked up the things that they would need. Each had 4 litres of water in their bag, and a full canteen on their belt. They also kept; a map, a compass each, a 2 man tent, packed lunch each, a roll of toilet paper, insect repellent, a spade, thin cloth balaclavas and a package, that when they opened would give them their mission. They discarded an inflatable kiddie pool, a dictionary, spare tent poles, a rubber chicken and a large packet of salted peanuts.

"Salt makes you thirsty" said Chris pulling on the balaclava to shield him from the sun. "Too bad we didn't get sun glasses, our eyes are going to be killing by the end of this."

They opened the package.

"You're not going to believe this," said Chris. "The fucking thing is in Russian."

"It says go west, south west for 6 kilometres, re calibrate the compass and go north west for 10 kilometres. Climb the plateau to the north and find the high visibility turkey. Well… it says turkey or it says checkpoint… I think it says checkpoint." translated Simon over a period of 2 minutes.

"Okay, if we look at the map, going west south west for 6, then from there going North West for 10. That would put us here… why don't we just go directly from here to there as the crow flies?" said Chris.

"Good idea." said Simon.

"You could've come up with it if you hadn't been thinking so hard about Louise in her bikini." teased Chris.

"What? I wasn't… I don't… How do you…" spluttered Simon.

"I'm just messing with you man, c'mon lets go." Chris stood up, shouldering his pack.

"Is it really that obvious?" asked Simon.

"Only to me, my friend. My eagle eye catches everything; especially the string of drool that hit your leg when she said that your joke was funny." laughed Chris.

It was boiling hot. Chris could already feel the skin on the back of his neck blistering from the pure intence heat from the giant glowing orb in the centre of the sky.

"Could be worse" panted Chris. "At least out here its too hot for the blowflies. God hate blowflies."

They walked along, counting their steps silently for the next while. Occasionally one would lose their count and the other one would remind them. Between the two of them, they made it to roughly where the map had showed. Chris spun around 360 degrees and saw the plateau in the distance, to the North, North west. So they were off by a couple hundred metres, so what. They saw the plateau and began to jog towards it. It wasn't so much a vertical climb, as a steeply diagonal one. They used their hands and feet to climb. At one point Simon saw a spider, but it scuttled away when it saw them.

They reached the top, and saw the checkpoint. It was a big fluro orange barrel. In the barrel was cans of spaghetti with rip tab lids, another parcel of directions, 8 more litres of water and two pair of sunglasses.

"Godsend!" said Chris picking up the shades. "My eyebrow muscles hurt from squinting!" They ate the food, drank what was left of that days water and set up the tent. Chris sprayed Insect repellent on again, sprayed the doorway of the tent and used the spade to dig down and burry the empty tin cans and 4 empty 2 litre plastic milk bottles.

The following morning Chris and Simon got up and began to walk in the provided direction. It was much better with the sunglasses, and he barely even lost count of his steps that whole day. At the next checkpoint that evening, the barrel contained water, small animal traps and a rather pissed off black belly python. Chris jumped back from the barrel, the snakes poisonous fangs where his hand had been not half a second earlier. Chris had seen the crocodile hunter do it a million times, had seen the Aboriginals do it in movies, but had never done it before himself. He kicked the barrel over, and the python slithered out. Chris jumped over it, grabbed the tip of its tail, and swung it up around his head. After one rotation he brought it down with as much strength as he could muster. It cracked down into the red dust, dead. He had broken its neck/spine/tail.

"Don't bother with the animal traps," he told Simon, holding up the dead snake. "I got dinner."

He used his Swiss army knife off his belt, to skin, gut and clean the snake. It wasn't far from doing a fish, but it was longer. About 1.5metres, it was a few inches wide at the centre. They made a small fire and cooked the snake.

"How do you like your snake?" asked Chris, reminding himself of Crocodile Dundee.

"Because you're getting it well-done." said Chris. Simon laughed.

The next few days passed pretty much the same; follow the directions, reach the checkpoint, eat, sleep and do it again. Then one day they reached the Checkpoint to find a big Toyota four wheel drive land rover; the car that summed up Australia. Chris was surprised to see Queensland plates on it.

"SCORE! I'm driving." cried Chris.

"Fine, but I get shotgun." said Simon.

"There's only two of us you idiot." said Chris.

It was an old car, with a fair few kilometres under its belt. The brake pads were worn away, they could hear the screeching of steel on steel when they were used. Other than that, its air-con was busted so they wound all the windows right down. The radio worked, but as if there would be any stations in the middle of the Gibson Desert.

That night Chris spotted a glint of orange in the light from the headlights. It was too dark to be a mirage. They got closer, pulled up and got out.

"Welcome to camp Chris. Where every player wins a prise, and any amount of sadness is too much." said Chris. Simon went to the barrel, knocked it over and jumped back. There were no creepy crawlies, so he fished out a water bottle and took a swig. He threw the bottle to Chris to drank a nice long deep amount. He put the bottle down and began to set up the tent, while Simon set up a small camper stove and dropped in two petroleum tablets. He set them on fire and places an open can of baked beans on top. They ate and then went to bed. Chris slept on the floor, fully dressed, using his rolled up sleeping bag as a pillow. There was 2 days of Basic left. Tomorrow they were supposed to reach the final checkpoint which was the finishing point for every team. There would probably be some incredibly daunting task to finish with.

11. Grey

Chris and Simon got most of the way there before the Land Cruiser spluttered and ran out of petrol. Chris swore, got out, kicked the wheel.

"YOU BOAT!!!" he screamed. "Alright, lets start walking." They got their stuff out of the back seat and started to walk.

"We should be directly on the Tropic of Capricorn." said Simon looking at the map.

A few hours later they arrived at a run down shack. They saw another land cruiser and a pair of Kawasaki dirt bikes.

"Ill bet Large deliberately didn't give us a full tank." said Chris. They had less than an hour left till the dead-line. Chris and Simon sprinted the last few hundred metres. When they arrived, they discovered that they were the last team to get there.

"Wasn't that a bit close? Where were you guys?" asked one of the girls.

"Our car ran out of petrol, turns out that Large doesn't like me very much. Who knew?" said Chris.

"Alright boys and girls, and Chris who we're not sure about. Welcome to the second last day of Basic training. Ill bet you're all thinking you've made it. Well I still own you all for the rest of today, and all of tomorrow." said Large.

"YAY!!!" said Chris. "I was hoping that the fun wasn't over."

"Oh, you've got that right, McTavish. The fun is only just beginning." said Large smiling meanly.

They all got into the Land Cruiser, Large had used a jerry can from inside to top up the fuel. He drove them out to another part of the desert. Where they all clambered out of the car.

"Welcome to the final test." said Large.

"Thank you. The pleasure is all mine." said Chris.

"McTavish, do push-ups while I explain it to everyone." said Large.

"Just for you, sir." said Chris nodding with excitement.

"Anyway, this is the final test. At the top of each of these wooden poles is a grey T-shirt. The poles are 10metres high and coated in a thin layer of grease. Climb the pole, get the shirt." said Large. The wooden poles were about as round as your generic tree. After unsuccessfully trying to scale the slippery pole a few times, Chris had a brainwave. He took out his knife and tried to use it to haul himself up. Then he realised that nothing would hold him as he pulled it out to stick it back in again. He would need two… chris took off his blue shirt, the sun quickly beginning to cook his back and chest, he wrapped it around the pole, and pushed off from the pole. He then began to walk up the pole. He was about 4 metres high when his shoe slipped on the grease. His face smacked into the pole and he let go of the shirt with one hand. He crumpled at the base of the pole. Large let out a howl of laughter. Chris started to laugh as well, not because he thaught it was funny, but to show Large that he was undeterred from the task. Chris rubbed his shoes against the pole, getting them a nice coating of grease on the soles. Then he stamped in the dirt, sticking a heap of the red grains to his feet. He tried again, with his shoes covered in the rough gritty substance. He tried again to climb the pole in the technique that he had stolen from a Disney movie he had seen as a kid 'Mulan'. He was about halfway when he saw the shirt beginning to rip. He picked up the pace, trying to reach the top before the shirt fully ripped. He was about a metre from the top when he knew he wouldn't make it. He pulled his hands together, holding both ends of the shirt in one hand. He reached down and got his knife out of his belt. He threw himself up and smacked the blade into the shaft of the pole. It went in a good 5 inches, leaving only one inch of the blade not in the pole. The shirt ripped, and Chris was hanging from the pole with only the knife to stop him falling the 9metres back to the earth. His head began to fog and his vision to swim as he thought of the prospect of falling through empty space into the solid unforgiving ground. He let the two halves of his shirt fall to earth, trying not to watch them fall. A bead of sweat ran into his eye, stinging. He looked up at the end of the pole, 80cm away. He hauled himself up on the knife and reached out, his finger tips hooked over the edge. He let go of the knife and used both arms to haul himself up. His leg hit the handle of the blade, he bent his knee, bringing up his boot and sitting it on the hand grip of the knife. He took the plastic wrapped, slightly sun faded shirt and ripped off the plastic. He looked at the CHERUB logo on the front and smiled. He drooped the shirt over the end of the pole, wrapped it around his hands and used it to slide back down the pole, the handle of the knife zinged past Chris's face, almost hitting his nose. His feet hit the ground and he let go of the shirt falling over backwards.

"FUCK YES!!" he cried in triumph. He looked around. Simon and Gabrielle were already down wearing their new shirts. Toby was sitting on the top of his pole hugging the plastic wrapped fabric to his chest. Tara was half way up, doing the same thing that Chris had done, with the shirt wrapped around the pole and Louise had just touched down on the ground.

"Congratulations." said Large, holding out a hand to help Chris up.

"Thanks." nodded Chris, taking the hand. When he was standing up he wrapped his arms around Large and pulled him into a tight hug. "I fucking love you, man." He faked a few sobs.

"Get off me." said Large pushing him away in disgust.

The next few minutes were spent standing around talking about the Training. Then the chopper arrived and they all moved towards it. They got on and the helicopter whisked them away to the Perth Air Port, where they got onto another plane that took them directly back to London.

It was the middle of the day when they got back to CHERUB. The bus took them back to the compound where they got their stuff and left. Outside the gate, Mike and Kent were waiting for him. There was also a few other people for the other trainees.

"Check it out." said Chris pointing to his grey t-shirt.

"Congratulations." laughed Kent and Mike.

"Thanks." said Chris.

That night he had dinner in the cafeteria, he told the serving person he'd just got out of basic, so they doused an extra spoonful of mince, sour cream and cheese onto his corn chips. He thanked them and went to sit down with Mike and Kent. He called Simon over to sit with them as well.

"This is Simon, he was the unlucky kid who got landed with being my partner, and the thousands of push-ups, laps, runs through the assault course and missing out on meals that came with it." introduced Chris.

"Poor guy." said Kent.

"Over 150 push-ups on the first day alone." said Simon.

"How could you do that to the little guy?" exclaimed Mike, although he was grinning.

That night, after watching some TV, Chris slept in his comfortable double bed in his room. It was the most comfortable thing he had ever felt in his life. He was sure that he wouldn't be able to bring himself to get out of it the next morning.

The next morning Chris reluctantly got out of his bed, it was like consenting for someone to cut your arm off with a serrated spoon. He went and had a ridiculously long shower. It wasn't like England was going to run out of water. Then he put on one of his new grey t-shirts, the green fatigue pants and a set of polished black boots. Then he went downstairs to breakfast before going and performing his Fitness regime and doing the days classes. It seemed like Basic Training had built up his muscles, made him a lot fitter and made the classes a lot more fun, compared to having Large teach them.

"Hey Chris, Ill see you. I'm going away for a few months on a mission." said Kent.

"Yeah, okay man. Good luck. Catch ya." said Chris. As Chris left the class building and was walking back up to his room, Mike came running up behind him.

"Wait up." He yelled. Chris turned around and waited for Mike to jog over.

"Tonight on the top floor a girl is having a party in her room." said Mike.

"Sounds okay." said Chris. "Kent just left on his big-shot mission."

"Yeah, he found me earlier and said he was going." said Mike.

"So who's party is it?" asked Chris.

"This girl called Trisha. She just got her black T-shirt, and is celebrating." said Mike.

"You know her?" asked Chris.

"We went through basic together. We were going out for a while." said Mike.

"I see… are you guys weird together?" asked Chris.

"No, we are still good friends." said Mike.

"Cool. We don't even have any classes tomorrow do we?" asked Chris.

"No, its Saturday today." said Mike.

"Sweet." said Chris.

Chris went back to his room and changed into his board-shorts. He didn't like changing at the pool, because he wasn't comfortable being naked around other people. He slipped on his thongs (Not underwear, they are a type of Australian slipper. Wikipedia it.) He went down to the pool for a few laps. Although it was cold in England, the pool was heated to a bearable temperature. He put his thongs and towel in a pile by the door and dived into the water. He was the only person there, he floated on his back into the centre of the pool, closed his eyes and drifted for a while. It was good to wind down after training, school and the dramas of campus. After a minute or two he rolled onto his stomach and began to do laps. Swimming was one of the only sports that Chris liked to do, because it was cool and refreshing. It didn't matter if you worked up a sweat, because you are under water. He liked the way the water plastered his hair down to his face. The door opened and Chris waved to a girl who came in and went into the change rooms. She came out about a lap and a half later and got into the pool.

"Hey." said Chris nodding to her.

"Hi." she said unenthusiastically.

"I've seen you in here before a few times." he said. She didn't reply.

"You are a good swimmer." he said. "Sorry, am I bothering you?"

"No." she said.

"I'm Chris, what's your name?" he asked.

"Trisha." she said.

"Trisha, just got her black shirt, having a big party on the top floor?" he asked.

"Yeah, that's me." she said smiling.

"Ah, it _can_ smile." joked Chris.

"How did you hear about the party?" asked Trisha.

"Ol' mate Mike." said Chris.

"Are you going?" she said.

"Sure, unless I get a better offer in the next few hours." Chris joked. Trisha headed towards the diving platform. She passed the 5m and went up to the high dive.

"Don't die on me." Chris joked, watching from his place in the pool. Trisha smiled again and jumped.

12. Party

A few hours later Chris was up in his room getting dressed. He put on faded black jeans, black Zoo York shoes and a black shirt with the globe logo on the front and back. He was in the bathroom, putting gel through his hair, sculpting his fauxhawk. He put looked at his eyebrow and grinned, you couldn't get a cooler scar than one that killed a few hair follicles leaving a small bald patch halfway across his left eyebrow. He went back out into his room and sprayed on some deodorant.

He went down the hall to Mikes room.

"You ready bro?" he asked.

"Come in." came a call from inside. He went inside and found mike putting on his shoes; some green high-tops. Mike was also wearing blue jeans and a green shirt.

"You dress like an emo." said Mike laughing.

"You should spend 20 minutes at my last school in Australia. Do you know what a devil-lock is?" said Chris. "One guy at my school has a haircut bordering 2ft."

They went to the lift and went upstairs to the party.

It wasn't hard to find. You could hear the rap music all up the hallway. They went into the room past all the people hanging out in the hallway.

"What the hell is this music? I can understand the lyrics, no one is even screaming. I don't think that's gonna work for me, I need a drink." said Chris. Mike laughed.

"Hey Chris. Hey Mike." Trisha came up to them in a skirt and her black CHERUB T-shirt which was the cause of the party.

"Congratulations on making the black shirt club." said Mike. "It took you long enough." Chris laughed. He got a beer from an esky full of ice and cracked it open. He and Mike hung out in a corner of the room, near an open window.

"So you seeing any girls now?" asked Chris.

"No." said Mike.

"Ah, good. I hate competition." said Chris laughing. Mike gave him a look, not sure if he was joking or not. Just for a laugh Chris touched Mike's hand. Mike jumped backwards and narrowly missed falling out the window.

"Oh, shit mate you nearly went out the window there." laughed Chris.

"Maybe you should hold back your dirty urges before you get someone killed." said Mike.

Chris had a few drinks and got talking to a few different people. After a while he moved out into the hallway with a bunch of other people. A few of them said something about a swim, but Chris had heard horror stories of people swimming while they were drunk. He decided against it, and instead had a few more drinks. He didn't know how many he'd had, but it was a lot. Someone with at least a little bit of taste had got too the CD player, and it was now pushing out Linkin Park, which Chris could at least stand. After a few hours had passed and they were both well intoxicated, Chris and Mike said goodbye to a few people and went stumbling to the elevator.

It was 9 o'clock in the morning when Chris woke up. He was in a room, lying on the floor. It wasn't his room though; there were no posters on the wall. On the bed he saw Mike sprawled fully dressed on top of the sheets. Chris got up and staggered to the door, clutching his head. He went out into the hallway and saw the number on the door. He had been in Mike's room. He went down the hall to his own room, shut the door, undressed and ran a cold shower to wake himself up.

After he came out of the shower and got dressed he looked at his clock. It was half past one. He drank a glass of water and popped out a panadol. Then he went down to Mike's room. Mike was awake, lying across the couch watching TV with the volume turned right down. Chris closed the door.

"Hey Mikey, my main man." said Chris.

"Not so loud." said Mike clutching his head.

"Get a few of these in ya." said Chris tossing the panadol to Mike. "The wonder drug. I'm serious; they do liver transplants with these little babies."

"Good to see Australia is using state of the art medical equipment." groaned Mike as he popped a capsule from the bubble. He washed it down with some water.

Chris sat down on the couch beside Mike and watched the TV. It was showing people standing on a grass field. That narrowed it down to sport. A guy ran past in shorts and shoes with tags on the bottom.

"Soccer?" asked Chris.

"We call it football." said Mike.

"What do you call football?" asked Chris.

"Rugby" said Mike.

"Right, I'm with ya." said Chris.

"Do you know what's going on? I don't follow football." said Mike.

"I could pretend to know." said Chris. "Would that do?"

"I'm far too hung-over to give a damn." said Mike.

"Right, well what you are looking at here, is the Mega-Finals Cup. These guys in white and red are down 1 try, and these blue dudes, we'll call em' Manchester United because that's the only soccer team I've ever heard of, have to run out the clock. This guy is the Lead Captain Quarter-Back, and he has got the ball. He fakes left, no wait, he fakes faking left and then fakes right. Then he scores a touchdown" commentated Chris.

"I don't even know what to correct first." said Mike lazily.

"Knock out, and that's game. Lets go." said Chris.

"I want to see who wins." said Mike.

"Those blue pricks do, this is a re-run." said Chris.

"Liar, it has the little LIVE thingy flashing down there." said Mike.

"Fine, watch your football. I'm going down to the pool for a swim. Well, also to look at girls in swimsuits, but mainly for the swim." said Chris standing up.

"Have fun." said Mike.

"Oh, don't think I wont." said Chris with a grin.

Chris went back to his room and changed into his boardies. The people of the school were used to seeing him walking around in his board shorts and thongs and carrying his towel. They knew him as the Australian guy who is always at the pool. He walked into the pool building, threw his towel onto a chair and kicked off his thongs. There were about 6 or 7 other people in the pool. He waved then he walked to the pool and dived in. he chose an empty lane and began to swim laps. After he had done 50 he stopped and had a rest. He sat on the side of the pool dangling his legs into the water and looked around. The pool area was a large, high roofed building with white walls, a white roof and blue tiles on the floor. The rim of the pool was also blue, and the bottom of the pool was a white plaster substance. The lanes were marked out with more of the blue tiles. Chris saw the girl Tara from basic training walk out of the girl change rooms. He waved at her and she walked over. She was wearing a black, one piece swimsuit.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"What?" he asked.

"You were pretty drunk last night, how is your head." She said

"Oh, it was pretty bad this morning, not so bad now though. I had a pill. I don't remember seeing you at the party." He said.

"I wasn't at the party, you and Mike walked into my room by accident at about 3 in the morning. I took you guys down the hall to Mike's room; I don't know where yours is." She said.

"That's funny, because I'm about two doors away from Mike, across from Kent." He said.

"You must be like right next door to me then." laughed Tara.

"I probably was aiming for my room and got one door over by accident." said Chris. They talked for a while more before Chris did a few more laps. Then they walked back to their rooms and laughed that they had been neighbours for so long without realising it.

13. Contact

The next day Chris had a training exersize with a few other grey shirts. It had been quickly explained to him as a variation of paintball with modified Kalashnikovs and simunition where you had to defend a half-carton of eggs. It sounded fun. He got there to find Mr Large, Simon, Tara and a bunch of other grey shirts, as well as two navy shirts.

"Okay, everyone is here." said Large.

"Just for you sir." smiled Chris.

"McTavish, thank you for volunteering for the example of this incredibly painful training ammunition." said Large, swinging the AK-74 (a variant of the 47) around to Chris. He was about 3 metres away as he squeezed the trigger one handed and a spray of the bullets took Chris in the unprotected stomach and chest. Chris collapsed over backwards, winded and stinging. He spent the next few minutes writhing around in the dirt gasping for air and swearing everywhere in between.

"As you can see, the bullets hurt. They are designed for you to not want to get hit by them. There is a 3 metre rule, because the management enjoy babying you lot. McTavish, Tara and Clyde; Your with Dana here. Chris, she's from Australia just like you. You guys can talk about Koalas together or whatever it is you people do." said Large. When Chris finally got off the ground he went over to the equipment van and suited up with full body armour and picked up one of the Kalashnikovs and a pair of ammo clips. Tara, Chris, Dana and Clyde got onto a helicopter which flew them up over the urban ruin area where they would be fighting. Each person had a backpack stocked with water, ration pack and the 6 eggs that had to be defended.

"Here's the plan." said Dana in an Australian accent leaning in to Chris, Tara and Clyde. "We make our way into a corner of the area and hold out in a building. If you see a light grey bag, grab it and bring it with us."

"Sounds good." said Chris, cocking his AK trying to look like a macho commando.

The chopper dumped them in the area. Dana lead them off at a brisk walk towards the perimeter fence and began to jog up one way. Chris was right behind her with Clyde, a fairly tall guy who looked about 13 with buzz cut hair. Tara was bringing up the rear. The found the corner, there was a building squeezed right up to it. It had 2 floors, but only one roof. It looked as though the whole top third of the building was missing. It had big wide widows and a door in each face. A quick inspection said that there was a small sack of ammo clips inside in a cupboard. Upstairs Chris found a scope. He didn't have time to calibrate it to the gun, but it seemed to have night vision.

"I found a scope!" he called down the stairs. "Its got night vision."

"We can use it too look out after it gets dark." said Dana as she dragged a cupboard in-front of one of the doors.

After a few minutes they were completely set up. They had all their eggs hidden under a prised up floorboard, then they had put a crate over the top of it. Chris was up on the roof section, staying hidden and watching out for the other teams. Downstairs Clyde and Tara were waiting hidden behind the counter and Dana was behind the door, waiting to ambush anyone who came inside. They had all been given radios which dana had instructed them to turn right down and clip to the strap of their packs over their chest for easy access. They had gone over a few basic radio terms such as contact(conflict with enemy/ firing shots), hostiles(enemies) and e-vac(run like hell/ evacuation).

It was almost an hour before Chris saw a group of two people with blue balaclavas; The blue team. He adjusted his own dark yellow balaclava before whispering into the radio.

"Two Hostiles, approaching from the East." Then he moved slowly over to the East side of the building and prepared to open fire.

"On 3." fizzed Dana's voice through the radio quietly. Three seconds passed before Chris heard the radio say "Go!" He popped up from behind the wall, levelled the gun at the pair and squeezed off 4 shots. He also saw a few rounds fly out of the window beneath him. The hostiles were caught by surprise as the bullets smacked into their torsos and helmets. One of them dropped their gun and fell over clutching where a paint ball had got in the shoulder joint of his armour. He went down. The other managed to hold onto his gun but her legs buckled as they were hit by bullets. Chris sent off another few rounds into the one still holding her gun. He watched as Clyde and Dana went out to the pair and ordered them to surrender their weapons and backpacks. It took a few minimum ranged shots to convince them, but in the end they gave up their equipment. Their eggs were promptly smashed, the loading springs removed from their weapons and their food and ammo confiscated before they were ordered to run as fast as they could down the street towards the centre of the simulation area.

Another three hours passed without much event. Chris slumped down and leant back against the wall. He checked his ammo, knowing that he had fully loaded it just over an hour ago. It was starting to get darker and Chris could hear the sounds of battle raging towards the centre of the boundary. He put the night vision scope to his eye and scanned the area. He spotted a small figure hiding behind a burnt out car, taking shots at an opponent that Chris couldn't see. Suddenly from behind he saw someone shoot him in the back of the neck from minimum range. The small one whipped around and caught a few more rounds in the ribs for his trouble. He watched as an egg transaction was performed and the one with the gun crushed the eggs underfoot before giving his helpless prisoner one last shot and then running away. Chris looked around some more and saw a group of four approaching his current building with a sense of purpose. He thought he recognised one from earlier who they had taken by surprise. Somehow he had gotten a new weapon and was leading his whole team to get some revenge.

"Hostiles, from the East. We have been compromised." said Chris urgently.

"Roger that. We see them. Prepare for contact." said Dana. Chris put down the scope and snatched up his gun. He slung the strap over his shoulder and got in a good position.

"Go, go, go!" said Dana as she stood up in the window and squeezed off 12 shots in quick bursts. Chris put his gun and head over the wall and sent a flurry of shots into the group and below him, Clyde and Tara were also firing. Chris was not impressed with his own aim and decided to start going to the shooting range more. The Hostiles scurried for cover when the shooting started. Chris had seen two hide behind the wreckage of an old van and another behind a fairly thick looking tree. He hadn't seen where the other one went. Chris sat on the roof, waiting for someone to stick their head out in the open when he also noticed a pair of hostiles coming from the north.

"More hostiles at the north, they know something is going on." Said Chris. "There's two of them, both armed."

"Did you see where the fourth one of those bastards got to?" asked Dana.

"Two behind the van, one behind the tree." said Chris.

"Other one is sneaking around to flank us" said Tara. Chris moved to the indicated side of the building, leaned over and drilled Simon with 4 shots in the back of the head as he was crawling around the building.

"To hell he is." said Chris, putting a few shots into his arse for good measure. The hostiles from the north sent a spray of bullets at Chris, one got him in the shoulder and another in the side of the helmet. Chris fell back down into cover swearing from pain.

"We are in some deep shit" said Chris. "There's three in the alley to the east, two hiding behind a dumpster to the north and one right below me with a serious headache."

He popped up again and shot Simon, just to make sure the little bugger wasn't up to much. Then he dropped the empty clip and slid one off his belt before slapping it into the gun and pulling back the shaft. When next he stood up he aimed a tight burst at the hostiles to the North, smiling as he saw two of the rounds find their mark on his target's thigh. The target jumped and accidentally let go of his gun. The gun landed not 2 metres away, but it was out in the open. Chris shot the guy as he darted out to get his gun. The round hit a soft spot in the armour and the guy yelled in pain and collapsed on the ground. Chris shot him a few more times before going back to the east side and shooting Simon on the way past, set up ready to take shots at anyone who stuck their ugly mug out from cover.

Chris saw one of the hostiles in the alley lob something into the downstairs room and a few seaconds later a loud bang sounded from below Chris. The hostiles all ran from cover into the downstairs room after their stun grenade and Chris managed to drop one with a paint splat to his face mask. And a few on his shoulders and chest to match. Suddenly a quick sucession of excruciatingly painful rounds hit him in the back from minimum range. Chris cried our and rolled over, managing to hold onto his gun. He was looking at the second hostile from the north as another four shots hit him in the guts. Chris raised his gun and managed to squeeze off the rest of his clip into the figure. Most of the bullets missed, but a few hit and Chris was almost certain that one was a sternum shot. Chris dropped his empty gun and shakily stood up. Two more people came up the stairs and levelled guns at Chris.

"Such is life." he said, imitating Ned Kelly's famous last words as they both pressed their fingers into the triggers. Chris had never felt such a painful experience in his life as 20+ bullets hit him in the helmet, chest, ribs, gut, shoulders, arms and neck. He staggered backwards from the force of all the bullets and crumpled up against the low wall. The two figures stood over him, their lines blurred against the only light part of the sky. Chris could barely see as they relieved him of his consciousness with the butt of a rifle to the side of his helmet.

When Chris came to, it was the early hours of the morning and the sun was just rising behind him. He would have guessed about 5 or 6 in the morning. He moaned. Every part of him was in pain as he felt for the radio on his bag strap. He wasn't wearing his bag. He saw it a few metres away, open. He crawled over to it as his ribs and stomach cried in protest. He picked up the radio.

"Hello? You guys still alive out there?" he asked. After a few seconds he heard Clyde respond. "I don't know where the others are, I got separated."

"I'm still back at the building" Chris said.

"I know" said Clyde without turning on his radio as he poked his head up through the ladder hole.

"You got any weapons?" asked Chris.

"One working gun and two without loading springs." said Clyde. Chris tried to stand up.

"Give us a hand" he said to Clyde. Clyde helped him to his feet and helped him down the stairs to the lower part of the room. He noticed Dana's discarded radio on the ground and paint spatters all over the walls.

"The eggs safe?" asked Chris.

"I think so. Only, the crate got moved during the fray and I don't know which floorboard it was." said Clyde.

"It was one of these ones." said Chris going over to where he remembered the eggs to have been. Sure enough, he lifted one of the floorboards and saw the small pile of eggs. As he was looking he heard Clyde swear and a heap of gun shots going off. He slapped the board down and got behind some cover. Clyde slid the gun across the floor to Chris, who snatched it up, spun around and holding the AK with one hand and on a tilt Chris fired off a burst into the now recovered Simon. Simon dropped his gun and fell over backwards. Clyde darted out and grabbed Simons weapon. Chris slung his gun on his back and went over to Simon. After rolling him over, Chris inspected the backpack. He found a few eggs and threw them at the wall. He gulped down a few mouthfuls of Simon's water before throwing the bottle back into the bag and sending Simon on his way.

Not much more happened for the last few hours of the exersize, although Chris did manage to get shot a few more times and Clyde was shot in the balls. The siren went off and the teams all met in the middle of the area with their eggs. The team with the most remaining eggs left won. Chris and the rest of Yellow team hadn't lost a single egg because of their hide the eggs strategy, green team still had three quarters of their eggs, but one member had managed to get captured. Red team had 6 eggs left and blue team had lost all of their eggs. Although they had won, the amount of bruises on Chris's stomach and chest was alarming. Between the two on one onslaught on the roof and Large's demonstration the previous day, Chris's chest was blue, black, red and purple. They went back to the campus and Chris had a long shower and got some ointment for his bruises.

14. Mission

The next day Chris was called in to see Mac. He went downstairs on the elevator and, after knocking, went in to Mac's office.

"Hello Chris." said Mac.

"Hey." said Chris grinning.

"So, you've been through Basic training. How did you like it?" asked Mac.

"Well, I'd have to say that it was the second worst experience I have ever had." said Chris.

"Its designed to be the worst." said Mac.

"Maybe you should put in a part where you get to watch one of your only relatives get his throat blown all over you, then have your mother tortured and brutally murdered." said Chris. "That aught to liven things up."

"I see your point." said Mac. "Which is almost related to why I got you in here today. The ones who killed your family, the drug cartel, they are still at large in the London area. We would like to put you on a mission that would take them down." said Mac. Chris sat down in the chair opposite him.

"You have my undivided attention." said Chris.

_Mission Briefing for Chris McTavish and Mike Shepherd. This document is secured with a tracking device; do not remove from mission control. Do not copy or make notes._

_Henderson Family Syndicate_

_The Henderson Family Syndicate is a drug trafficking and dealing cartel founded in the late 70's by Karl and Dean Henderson, two brothers who grew up in a local London orphanage. They had been in the drug business since the age of 12(Dean) and 10(Karl). They founded the organisation at ages 20 and 22 and by the age of 35 both brothers had died due to drug and alcohol related problems. The gang continued on under a new leader but kept their original name._

_In the 30+ years it has been around. the HFS has grown to be one of the largest gangs in London and is now lead by 'Jonathan Price'. He is a 32 year old man with a reputation for being crazy and violent but also calculating, tactical and very smart._

_The Mission_

_The objective is for two CHERUB agents to infiltrate HFS and feed out information to authorities. This will lead to mass arrests by local police and damaging the structure of the organisation beyond repair. Main targets include Jonathan Price, his inner circle of lieutenants and advisors and the smuggling route into England._

_NOTE. THIS MISSION HAS BEEN CLEARED BY THE CHERUB ETHICS BENCH AND HAS BEEN CLASSIFIED AS HIGH RISK. CHERUBS ARE REMINDED OF THEIR CHOISE TO REFUSE THE MISSION AND THAT THIS MISSION MAY CONTINUE FOR UP TO A MONTH._

Chris was at the pool floating on his back in the middle of the water drifting with the small current. His badly bruised chest and stomach didn't hurt as much now but looked a lot worse than they were. He rolled over onto his stomach and swam a few laps before swimming to the side and climbing out. He walked over to his towel and dried his hair, neck, shoulders and face, then he left and headed up to the main building. On the way he passed Mike.

"So did you accept the mission?" asked Mike.

"Yeah." nodded Chris.

"Mac wants us to spend some time at the shooting range over the next week and a half before the mission." said Mike. "I'm heading down there now."

"Just gimmie a second to dump this stuff and grab a shirt and ill come with you." said Chris.

They headed down to the shooting range and signed out a pair of Jericho 941 9mm Pistols and a spare clip each. Chris was a fairly good shot for someone who had never held a real gun before that year but up against a black shirt who had lived at CHERUB since he was 11… well to say that Chris lost was the biggest understatement ever. He did manage to hit the target three quarters of the time and actually got near its centre with a few shots. Mike managed to get within 3 inches of the bullseye with every hit, including one where he covered his eyes with his off hand. It was 3 hours later when they returned the baby eagles to the gun desk and went back to the main building for dinner.

On the way to dinner Chris spotted Tara walking towards him from the end of the hallway.

"You go on, ill catch up." he said to Mike, stopping to adjust his shoe. Mike went into the lift and Chris was alone in the hall with Tara.

"Hey Tara." said Chris.

"Hey" Tara smiled.

"So, how have you been?" he asked. _How have you been?_ He thought back to himself realising how dumb it sounded.

"Good." she replied, not seeming to notice Chris's stupid line. She was looking at him expectantly. He ran a hand through his black hair and blew air through his teeth. Tara bit her lip and looked away for a moment. _Don't wimp out. Just ask her. If she says yes then it worked and if she doesn't then your back where you started, apart from the awkward moment when you look like a giant douche bag._

"So Tara, I was wondering if you maybe sometime wanted to hang out. Like go to the movies or get some food or something." Chris said, trying not to stutter or fumble his words too badly. He ran what he had said back through his mind to make sure he hadn't messed up and was extremely relieved when he realised he hadn't. Tara didn't say anything for what seemed like a minute and Chris was preparing for the worst when she nodded and smiled at him.

"sure." she said. Chris smiled back at her while in his mind he was punching the air, clicking his heels and cheering. They gave each other their mobile numbers and decided to go to the movies of Saturday night before Chris went down to the cafeteria to find Mike.


End file.
